Last month, Jesse Eisenberg had a very successful time at the Sundance Film Festival. The actor/writer/director had two movies premiere in Park City, Utah and earn positive receptions from critics: his latest directorial effort, A Real Pain, starring Kiernan Culkin; and David and Nathan Zellner' Sasquatch Sunset, which Eisenberg stars in alongside Riley Keough. Movie fans are unfortunately still waiting for a public first look at the former, but we now have our first trailer for the latter, and it certainly sells the feature as a bizarre experience.
The feature is the first from the Zellner brothers since 2018's Damsel starring Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska (not to be confused with Millie Bobby Brown's upcoming fantasy horror movie Damsel), and it certainly appears to be a unique cinematic experiment. Sasquatch Sunset is made as a nature mockumentary peeking into the lives of sasquatches, and because the central subjects don't speak a language, there is no dialogue. Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough are joined by Christophe Zajac-Denek and Nathan Zellner as a group of bigfoots who live in the wilderness in obscurity and live their every day lives.
Sundance write-ups found on Rotten Tomatoes highlight it as a gross and funny film, and that certainly comes in the edit for the Sasquatch Sunset trailer – with serious on-screen text that can be read with the voice of David Attenborough in one's head makes way for a pair of sasquatches humping in the forest while two others look on and hold hands. Their behavior is wonderfully odd, and I look forward in particular to their interactions with their animal neighbors (you just know that the interaction with the skunk doesn't end well).
It may not end up being a movie for everyone (The Atlantic describes it as an "endurance test"), as things apparently get quite disgusting, and it seems that the trailer is keeping the best stuff for the big screen.
Following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Sasquatch Sunset got picked up for distribution by Bleecker Street, and it won't be long until audiences everywhere will have the chance to experience the bizarreness for themselves. The movie will first be getting a limited release in select theaters on April 12, but it will be expanding into locations nationwide a week later on April 19.
Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more updates about the film, and for a look ahead at all of the features set to come out in this calendar year, check out our 2024 Movie Release Calendar. The aforementioned A Real Pain has been picked up for distribution by Searchlight Pictures, but a release date has not yet been announced (given the festival buzz, it wouldn't be surprising if we don't see it until the fall).
